Love This Place, Serve the Earth: Collaboration is Necessary for the Earth April 18, 2016

Love This Place, Serve the Earth: Collaboration is Necessary for the Earth April 18, 2016

AgendaWelcome and Introduction (Reed Price)Discussion: The Compassion Games, Love This Place (Jon Ramer and Joey Crotty)QuestionsJon’s Song (Jon)Concluding Discussion

About the SpeakersThis information, as well as information about the other speakers during the Earth Week Speaker Series, is provided in the announcement on the Charter for Compassion International website: http://www.charterforcompassion.org/index.php/environment-reports-and-documents/earth-day-speaker-series-and-presentations-2016.

Jon RamerFirst first follower, Compassion Games International, will be showcasing LIVE a new song for Mother Earth. Jon says that "since it is the Earth’s land, water, and clean air that we totally depend upon for our sustenance, well-being, and future, the decision to act compassionately toward our Mother Earth is as natural as breathing.” He adds that “‘Green Compassion’ is calling us to live in unprecedented, unified action to change the narrative of our current story to one of justice, sustainability, and love for one another, all beings, and this place we call home.”

Joey CrottyJoey a storyteller, writer and rogue techy supporting the Compassion Games. Joey utilizes his talents as a hopeless storyteller and writer, creative strategist, and rogue techy to elevate the evolutionary capacity of consciousness and compassion in the world. Joey is an undergraduate researcher and co-founder of the Consciousness Club at the University of Washington – Bothell. He is a major organizer toward the creation of the Center for Education and Research in Consciousness (CERC), the first consciousness program of its kind at a public university. Joey enjoys spontaneous song-making, belly laughter, all of nature, and learning from the wisdom of little ones too.

Introduction and Social Webinar Explanation

Reed: Good Monday morning, and welcome to the Charter for Compassion International’s Week Long Series: Love this Place. We’re doing this in cooperation and collaboration with our friends at the Compassion Games. They are involved in an earth week coopetition that we’re going to hear more about today, and we’re also going to learn more about the games in general.

Thank you all for showing up! Although there is not any particular activity that we are planning to do on the social webinar, you can follow along in case we put up any websites or other notes or links. Don’t hang up your phone, but if you have access to a computer there’s a link that was included in the invitation that you got for today’s call. If you click on that link it’ll open up in a browser window. Or if you know the pin that you used to log in today, you can go to social.maestro.com and use your email that you registered for this call with, and the pin number you received to see the social webinar.

Our guests today are Joey Crotty and Jon Ramer.

Jon Ramer, First first follower, Compassion Games International, will be showcasing LIVE a new song for Mother Earth. Jon says that "since it is the Earth’s land, water, and clean air that we totally depend upon for our sustenance, well-being, and future, the decision to act compassionately toward our Mother Earth is as natural as breathing.” He adds that “‘Green Compassion’ is calling us to live in unprecedented, unified action to change the narrative of our current story to one of justice, sustainability, and love for one another, all beings, and this place we call home.”

Joining Jon is Joey Crotty, a storyteller, writer and rogue techy supporting the Compassion Games. Joey utilizes his talents as a hopeless storyteller and writer, creative strategist, and rogue techy to elevate the evolutionary capacity of consciousness and compassion in the world. Joey is an undergraduate researcher and co-founder of the Consciousness Club at the University of Washington – Bothell. He is a major organizer toward the creation of the Center for Education and Research in Consciousness (CERC), the first consciousness program of its kind at a public university. Joey enjoys spontaneous song-making, belly laughter, all of nature, and learning from the wisdom of little ones to get out there and play like his life depended on it.

I will invite everyone here to participate in the conversation at any time by pressing the one key on your touch tone phone or, if you are on the social webinar, raise your hand by pressing the raise hand button which will indicate that you would like to talk and we will pass the mic to you and let you join in. So with that, Jon and Joey, welcome!

Jon and Joey discuss Compassion Games, Love the Place

Jon and Joey – Thank you Reed. It’s great to be here.

Jon: It’s great to be a part of the Charter’s Speaker Series and great to be a part of the Charter and this swelling of compassion that’s going on right now and we’re on Day 3 of Love This Place, Serve the Earth week. Today’s mission for those of you that are hungry and want to know is “Love Food.” So we’ve just come from “Love Seven Generations,” and “Love Water” and actually we recorded this morning a conversation with Dr. Jane Goodall, and Phil Lane and that was one of the topics that just naturally emerged, is the kind of wisdom of the indigenous and the recognition of future generations. So it’s perfect timing, we’re on a roll and Day 3 is on.

Joey: Just to give you an idea - to whet your appetite, if you will – for love food, Michael Polland is a big inspiration for how we communicate about reconnecting to earth through food. And he says, “Is there any practice less selfish, any time less wasted than preparing something delicious and nourishing for the people you love?”

Jon: Yes. So if you haven’t been getting the missions, you still can. Just go to the compassion games website; there’s the coopetition for “Love This Place, Serve the Earth” Week and sign up there. We’ve got another 6 days of missions to go. And of course the encouraging action is to post it on the report map, so that you can begin to see what we represent as a whole and elevate the goodness that’s happening in the world. It’s an urgent time for that and it’s also an incredible time. Tremendous hope. I hope you’ll join us on Friday morning when we air the interview with Dr. Goodall. She talked about all the reasons to be hopeful in spite of all the doom and gloom. And she is amazing, my god. What a force and power to be reckoned with.

Joey: Yes. And we always focus on three elements of compassion, which are really all the same. Compassion for self, compassion for others, and compassion for the earth! And so Earth Week is about all about focusing our efforts on serving the earth, and reconnecting with each other through that.

Jon: Right, and thanks to Dr. Walker for the 3D, 3 Dimension! So of course you can’t lose the compassion games. And when we started the compassionate cities campaign in Seattle, which is kind of the roots of this, we realized the beautiful vision to have a compassionate city, compassionate neighborhood, compassionate community. But the vision alone isn’t sufficient. And we know that it would require new and creative ways to engage with the community. And we were fortunate here in Seattle that the Mayor of Louisville challenged us, claiming that they were the most compassionate city in the world and would be so until proven otherwise, and that’s what birthed the games. 2012, the first year, was a draw. Even though they clearly did better than we did, they were very kind. In fact they said that they were so compassionate, they’d come out to Seattle to help us beat them. And then we actually branched out and incorporated the Compassion Games International as its own nonprofit in 2014. And we have now five annual coopetitions. So this one that’s happening April 16 through the 24th is “Love This Place, Serve the Earth” Week, but we’ll then be reconvening for the next one in September for the Global Unity Games: Tomorrow, Together. And then the Giving Games happen in December, for youth and schools. And once again we’ll start the cycle up in 2017 with MLK Day and then World Interfaith Harmony the first week in February. So this is the foundation upon which we’re building compassion games as a way to be contributive to this overall compassion movement, inspired by the Charter and all the other many groups and organizations working to create a more compassionate world.

Reed: Jon, could you talk a little about what sparked you to create the compassion games? Where did the idea start?

Jon: I had read an article about collective impact. So many people, if you get into a conversation with them about solutions, realize that there are so many great solutions that aren’t connected. People talk about silos and redundancy and wasted time and energy because so many groups don’t know how to work together. This is something we’re not that good at naturally. We each have our own visions and our own ideas and how we marry and merge those. That’s why music’s such an important teacher for me and for us because to harmonize with each other is so important. So when I read about collective impact I said: “that’s a great idea!” You know, the idea that there are five conditions. You’ve got to have a shared agenda, some kind of shared measurement system, you need mutually reinforcing activities, you need to have continuous communication, and there needs to be some backbone support.

But still, as great as that was it was kind of theoretical. I was eager to bring collective impact into life, and when the challenge came from Louisville, I realized that the Compassion Games could easily embrace those five conditions. We want to create a more compassionate community; everyone who participates with the Charter wants that. We could set up a simple measurement system, in this case the four core measures, in our case the number of volunteers, hours of service, number of people that are served (both directly and indirectly), as well as the money raised for local causes. And in doing so you create a catalytic event, mutually enforcing activities that strengthen all of the things happening in the community. So the games is not about adding something new as much as it is about connecting what’s already working in communities, building a flow of communication in between them using these five times a year to generate momentum and energy for the work that we’re doing as a whole and that the games could act (like the Charter does) as a backbone to support all the good work that is happening.And it’s just been awesome! The things that people do and come up with are things that we could have never imagined. People have played the games in prisons for the last three years in California. We’re really challenging schools. There are some incredible stories. And we ask people to share the results of their participation in the games on the Global Compassion Report Map. And that’s really where we can see the results, and feel it and taste it and touch it. So it was a weaving of the collective impact, using games as a simple reframe on issues around “play,” reframing competition, so that we’re not really competing. We say we’re in coopetition, where we cooperate to compete not against but with each other.

Joey: A core vision for the Compassion Games is taking things that are really heavy in the world and spinning them in a way that we can come together and play together, and do the heavy lifting with a lighter heart. I think often times people feel so overwhelmed by what’s going on and it’s understandable – we’re all there sometimes. It’s about coming together to bring more goodness and light in the world. We get to elevate all the good that’s happening; we get to amplify it. We start to think about human nature in a more rounded and whole way. Not seeing survival of the fittest, but of the kindest. If you look at all the research that backs this up, human beings are fundamentally compassionate and cooperative social animals. So the games tap into that, and try to spread that.

Reed: Joey, you’ve done a lot of work successfully crafting challenges for people to participate in. You also look for people to bring their own ideas about how to compete in the games. Can you talk about the idea of designing and lifting up some of the ways that people have played the Compassion Games?

Joey: It’s an open and creative platform for cooperation. We love and encourage communities who are excited about the games. A lot of the things we take on are actually things communities have already come up with. For example, there was a social coin that was created at a Seattle school. They passed based on acts of compassion at their school. We thought that was amazing. So that’s the kind of thing that we look at. We see that it was already working. We applaud that and try spread what’s already happening. Another school created a chain of compassion where people wrote stories about themselves and their names on links and created a huge chain of those links, over 400 links long for the entire school. So people really come up with amazing ways [to play]. And if it’s simple enough, other communities can replicate what’s been done and we’ll put it up on the website as a way to play.

John has a framework for making sure that the rules of action and all the principles of what a game truly is, are embedded in those ways to play.

Jon: In this thematic approach that we’ve been doing in the games, World Interfaith Harmony Week is a good example. So, nine congregations in Eugene, Oregon came together. Their report was called “Sock it to compassion.” They bought about 1000 pairs of socks to care for the homeless folks in Eugene. They shared in their report that in the process of delivering socks, they found that what the homeless people really needed is a laundry. So now they’re working to create that. So you can come up with creative ways to serve your community, and you can share those ideas and your reflections - that makes the games a real learning environment. People are taking what they’re learning in the games and taking it back to the real world and using the games as a platform for that kind of inspiration. And there are just a ton of those examples! If you go to the compassion games website and click on reports, you’ll see that already, reports are starting to come in from “Love This Place, Serve the Earth” week. But you can go back in time and as you zoom around the map, wherever you highlight the gallery of reports is filtered to show what’s going on there. You can see, compassion is lighting up all around the planet. It could be the challenge around 9/11 day, we’ve got a tremendous opportunity for young people all over the world to unite around “Tomorrow, Together” (we’ll talk more about that coming up in September). And then we’re talking to, for example, the Theo Chocolate company here (Seattle), about them sponsoring a compassion game! Imagine the compassion games chocolate bar. Open the candy and the wrapper has a mission. You share your chocolate and sign up to play.

We’re bringing the Compassion Games into all sorts of different settings. Not just to prisons and schools but businesses and communities all over the world that see the importance of bringing compassion to life at this time.

Joey: We’re continually surprised by what people do, in such a touching way. As if we thought that the creativity was somehow depleted, it only seems to be increasing and growing, which is incredible.

Jon: We’ll be in Detroit for Points of Light at their volunteering service conference. We’ll be passing the torch to connect the points of light. So there’s lots of creative ways that you can embrace the games; it’s an open platform and we encourage people to know no limit, challenge themselves, play their hearts out and bring the compassion into their community and then share with us what that meant and allow others to learn from what you’ve done and bring that to their community as well.

Reed: I’ve added the report page to the social webinar. For those of us that are on social webinar, you can see the opening that invites you to view the map or add the report. Anyone who is online now and looking at the social webinar, you can interact with that screen on your own computer to see how it works. Jon and Joey, why don’t you talk a little bit about the work have you done to improve and enhance the mapping component, and what the goals are there with those little reports that people are putting up.

Jon: There are four steps to play in the games. The first step is you sign up to play, and we want to make this easy for everyone. Every coopetition has a mission that goes out each day. So you’re an agent of compassion and each day you receive a mission connected to the theme for that coopetition.

Joey: That’s really our core offering, the missions. Everyone’s an agent, and the missions are something that everyone gets.

Jon: Right, exactly. And we hope each mission leads you to go back to the report map to share your experience of what you did. You can also choose to sign up to play as a team. That’s one of the fun things about the games. School classes will sign up as sub-teams, school districts, etc. You don’t have to play alone.

The second step is to play! We have on the site a directory of different games that are available to play, as an individual or as a team.

The third step is to report. This is the third generation of report maps, and we just keep making it better and better. The report map can be added to your mobile phone. If you navigate to the website and click on “reports,” you can add that particular URL to the home screen on your android or apple phone. It’s not what’s called a “native app” yet because there are things we would love it to do that it doesn’t do yet. But it does do the basics: you can add a photo, talk about what you did and reflect upon it, as well as give us the coin call compassion in terms of volunteers, hours, people served and money raised That map is visible on the website or your phone. We’re going to make it better. The Compassion Today app is something Dr. Lesa Walker has been working on as something people can use to report as well. We want to make it easy for people. There’s even an audio memo if you don’t want to type out your report. You can attach that audio memo inside your report

Joey: Or video memo!

Jon: We’re in this age of hypeconnectivity; we want to make the reporting process as simple as possible. You can be anonymous! You’re not reporting to get credit. You’re reporting so others can be inspired by what you’ve done and elevate the goodness.

Joey: It’s interesting – the reporting is definitely the most challenging bit about this. It’s so important to reflect. It helps people realize the impact they’ve made. It helps elevate good in the world by sharing what they did. It’s almost like a news source for goodness. So often, we turn on the news and see bad news and over time we are convinced that the world is full of bad news. But the truth is that acts of kindness happen all the time and we just don’t see the story. So sharing our compassionate news allows us to see the good. We think this idea is starting to catch on and grow. We’re really excited for people to share their stories. Sharing what you’ve done allows you to see yourself as part of a global effort.

Jon: It’s an infinite game. And there was a book written about the infinite games which really was an inspiration for some of this. In a finite game there’s winners and losers. You cannot lose the Compassion Games. The point is not winning or losing, it’s to keep playing. The more people that play, the more people win. We’re hoping that the games becomes a simple, creative way for you (whoever you are, wherever you are). For instance, one of our partners is Play for Peace, an amazing organization with thousands of chapters around the world, mostly in conflict zones where they educate people on peace and they play the games as a way of building bonds of trust and reestablishing what’s necessary for communities to heal. That’s at the root of what we’re really talking about – there’s a lot of healing to be done. The core vision for the games came out of the work that we were doing with the Dalai Llama in 2008 with Seeds of Compassion where we met the Compassion Games International Chairman, Hereditary Chief Phil Lane and Phil shared with me the 16 guiding principles that are summarized in this beautiful statement that says: “starting from within, working in a circle, in a sacred manner, we heal and develop ourselves, our relationships, and our world.” Our hope is that compassion is a catalyst for that kind of healing. For ourselves, or relationships, our world. And boy, it was beautiful to hear Dr. Goodall this morning. Elder Sister Jane, as Phil calls her. She talked about how in all of the doom and the gloom there are all of these reasons to have hope in the world. And we’ll share that recorded interview with her on Friday morning as part of the Earth Day Webinar right here on the Charter for Compassion Speaker Series. Thank you Reed, and Mimi, and Sommer, and Barbara, and Marilyn of course for being such a great partner and making it possible for us to work together.

Questions and Discussion

Reed: If anyone has a comment or a question, you can raise your hand on the social webinar by pressing “raise hand” or pressing one on your touch tone phone and we’ll recognize you. Jon and Joey, perhaps you can talk about how this particular coopetition, “Love This Place,” is going. I’ll put the link on the webinar so that everyone can easily see it. What are some activities coming up? You mentioned some of the days that you’ve already had since kickoff on Saturday.

Jon: Well these are for secret agents of Compassion! We will maybe make some news and start to disclose some of the missions as they’re coming. We already went through “Loving Seven Generations” which was a challenge to go out into nature and imagine this place that you love and what it will be like in a thousand years. I realized, wait a minute. It was 1016 a thousand years ago and I don’t know what was going on in discovery part in 1016. I tried to imagine what it would be like in 3016. It’s a challenge! The way that we are behaving is impacting the world. In fact when we were talking to Jane Goodall a few minutes ago she was heading to Miami. And of course Miami is one of those places that may not be here much longer. And they were talking about a Hereditary Leader up in Greenland and the rate at which the ice is melting is accelerating faster than anybody thought it would. But let’s share some of the upcoming missions and some of the missions that we’ve already had!

Joey: All of these missions come from the place that if you remind people that they really have a love for the natural world, they’ll naturally want to rise and act in compassionate ways. It’s about subtle changes in how we relate to each other, ourselves, and the earth. So far we’ve had “Love Seven Generations” which is based on the indigenous law and teaching that every action and law we pass today should take into account how it impacts future generations of life. Seven generations is roughly 440 years, but we went with 1000 years. If you walk through nature and imagine who might be walking here in 1000 years and how can we really love that place in a way that would allow our descendants to enjoy the beauty, wonder, and goodness of the earth in the same way that we are able to now? So that was what the first mission was about. And we’ll put this up on the website and on Facebook so if you haven’t done it yet you can go back and do it.

The second mission was “Love Water.” We bring attention to the fact that water is life. Human beings can live up to three weeks without food, but only three days without water. Less than 1% of our planet’s water is drinkable, and over 60% of our bodies are made out of water. So this mission was bringing attention to how easy it is to not appreciate what water does for us and how precious it is as a resource for all life.

The third mission just came out this morning and is about making a meal for someone you love. As Michael Pollan puts it, food is our most direct experience with nature. We are literally taking her sustenance into our bodies. That food becomes our bodies. And when we make healthy, nourishing food for one another, that’s really an act of compassion. [It’s important] to be really thankful for the bounty of this planet, and putting a lot of intention into our food. Studies show that Americans especially only spend 30 minutes a day cooking, cleaning up and eating each meal combined. So that’s 10 minutes per meal. People are really rushing through it; they aren’t really able (because they’re so busy) to really settle down and appreciate what it is that they’re eating.

And finally, a sneak peak for tomorrow’s mission, Mission# 4 is “Love Energy” and this is kind of a tricky one.

Jon: Shhh! Don’t let this word get out! We don’t want this to spread! This is for secret agents!

Reed: You’re all in the cone of silence!

Joey: Yes, the cone of silence! This one is all about fossil fuels, coal, and all of these old energies. This ancient sun energy that’s been trapped in the earth and they’re not ideal to use anymore. How can we shift to clean and renewable energies and how can we take steps as individuals and communities to do the small things that we can do that add up to huge impacts in a renewable future? Each mission offers tangible ways to really dive in. Make it fun! Engage with your friends and your families and your households, wherever you are.

Jon: On the “Love this Place” Earth Week landing page we have a couple featured ways to play and one of our partners this year is the Communities Resilience Challenge. If you go there and take a look you can see, that it’s another example of how you can get your community together to bring in some of these practices that were part of the inspiration for some of these missions. So certainly, switching to clean, renewable energy – this is a must have. Sun Up Our Sanctuaries is one of the games we’ve been playing as well as part of World Interfaith Harmony Week and this whole solar challenge. Switching to clean, renewable energy as soon as possible for all purposes and all people. It’s gotta happen. It’s just one of those things.

Joey: So that’s a sneak peek! If you are interested in missions and have not signed up to play on the Compassion Games Earth Week landing page, it’s really easy to do that. It’ll be every morning until the 24th. And on Earth Day, that’s when our conversation with Dr. Jane Goodall and Hereditary Chief Phil Lane will air. So that’s another way to get access to that conversation.

Reed: Spread the word. You can play any of these, anywhere along the week. Once you sign up you can go back and start at the beginning, or mix and match as the week goes on, and you have some interest in posting and thinking, both for reflective purposes and to share your involvement in that map that we were looking at earlier.

Jon: Missions contain recourses and links to go deeper if you choose to. We want to keep them simple for all ages but also allow for some of the back story and depth contained in each mission. They’re a collaboration led by Joey, Sommer, and Lesa, and many have contributed to giving them the real heft and depth that we want them to have so that they’re really meaningful and impactful.

Joey: We treat them like a Pixar movie. Kids love them, but the message is really for the parents. Adults find these missions meaningful, and we try to keep in mind children and youth. We want to make it accessible and exciting not only to youth but to adults. If anyone on this call has a child in your life, we encourage you to share the missions with them and to inaugurate them as agents of compassion!

Reed: Can you talk about some of the reports that you’ve received over the years? The number of people playing and the geographic spread of individuals and groups has been dramatic. Can you talk about some of these communities that have touched your hearts?

Jon: Oh for sure, that’s easy to do. I think it’s over 35 countries now where people have embraced the games and posted reports.

This is one of my fave stories. Bad-y turns good-y story. Charles Barker set out to feed 20,000 kids in Dallas Fort Worth. (There are amazing things coming out of Texas!) So he committed to get 20,000 kids fed. And, sure enough, one thing led to another and he was able to accomplish it. They went to 250,000 meals, and then a MILLION meals. All because of Charles Barker and the Dallas Fort Worth community that embraced compassionate action. That’s another report that got posted.

Another one of my favorites was in Spain. Hookers and nuns teamed up to clean the streets in Spain – talk about unity in diversity! And then there was another one, The Society for Ethical Culture in New York City, during the MLK games. I love this one because we’re talking about how injustice was being manifested there because the kids were complaining that their parents were requiring them not to use their devices when the parents themselves were using their devices as much or more than the kids. And the kids felt that it was unjust so they made a call that everyone should stop using devices and spend more time with their families.

And these are just examples, just a few that come to mind, that come to the report map every day. People can embrace the games, and use it for creative ways as well.

Joey: I was looking at some of the reports just from the beginning of Earth Week. It’s beautiful. I love seeing the world through others’ eyes. It’s amazing what other people see - it gives me a lot of hope. It’s why we do this.

Jon: Look at what’s happening with technology, how we’re benefitting from learning from each other. This is collective wisdom. This is one of our breakthroughs in society. This is something Jane Goodall talked about this morning how social media is really changing the game. We can learn so much from each other. Like the way these apps get improved so quickly. Why not have our way of living improve so quickly? We have it within our reach. We are all incredibly connected. This webinar is just another example of that. What do we choose to do with this? That’s up to us. That’s where there’s a moment of choice.

Joey: Yeah, it’s really how do we leverage our technology to create higher qualities and higher levels of fulfillment in our lives. Michael Meade, who is mentor of mine, says that we have latitude of loss. We are so connected horizontally across the platforms of all of these social media applications, we have thousands of friends on Facebook, and yet feelings of isolation and loneliness are on the increase. So there’s a really deep irony there. And the latitude of loss is the depth that comes from connecting with another real human being. We hope to leverage our technology to create more connection and therefore more love, compassion, fulfillment, and happiness.

Reed: I want to add that if someone has an experience of playing in the Compassion Games and wants to express it, just press one on your keypad and I’ll recognize you. The other thing you were talking about earlier, Jon, is the importance of music. Maybe you can share the song you’ve been working on as part of “Love This Place” – the new song for Mother Earth, can you tell us a little about that?

Jon: Sommer and I were on Whidbey Island and we went to the Whidbey institute. It was an off day there, I think it might have been closed (I’m actually sitting here with Sommer) but we walked into the sanctuary, and it was beautiful. I’ve played music and written songs for many, many years and just something hit me: okay, it’s time to write a song and see what happens. Of course it was raining, this song is from Seattle so it embraces the power of the rain. I remember when I was a kid hearing Bob Dylan singing “a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.” So this song kind of emerged and we’ve been playing it around the house here at the compassion heart quarters. It really is intended to connect that cycle of life and remind us about the natural world, and our connection to it.

Jon and Joey Play Their Song

Reed: It was the earth melting down that made me look around and it made me play the compassion games! Thanks a lot guys; that was great. I want you to send me those lyrics so that we can put them on the report that we’ll send out in about 72 hours. Will you do that? That would be wonderful.Jon: Of course, it was our pleasure. Thank you Joey.Joey: I love playing with JonJon: Doing a lot of playing around here!Concluding Discussion

Reed: I want to thank you guys for taking this hour and sharing it with us. We have a call at the same time tomorrow; “Practicing Green Compassion: Can We Re-Green the World in One Generation?” Marc Barasch will be there with us.The following day is “The Science of Climate Change” with David Poister. We’ll be learning about where we are with the earth melting down and see if it can make us look around!

Thursday is “Shifts in the Culture around Climate” with Sarah van Gelder of Yes! Magazine and George Price of the University of Montana. They’ll be talking about ways that we’re seeing the kinds of connections around the world that Jon and Joey were talking about; ways that things are changing.

And as we said a couple of times on this call. Earth Day itself at 9am we have a great call with Jane Goodall, Hereditary Chief Phil Lane, Jr., Rex Weyler of Green Peace, and a member of Earth Guardians, is that right?

Jon: Yes we are working to get Martinez with us; you know they just had this court victory in which the judge said that its okay for the youth to sue for the fact that the government and corporations are destroying the earth on their behalf. So we’re looking forward to that. Hope that Xiuhtezcatl Martinez can join us.

Reed: You can register for all of these events. They’re listed on the top calendar area on www.charterforcompassion.org. There’s a link to the entire series on the page so I invite you to go there and learn more about that. Also, we appreciate any support that you might give to the Charter. These calls are always free but we welcome your support to keep these things going, like the partnership we have with the Compassion Games. So I am going to put a link to the CCI donate page on the webinar and if you are so inspired, I invite you to stay on the call for a couple of minutes and you can actually go to that page and if you want, give us a couple of dollars or sign up as a member with the Charter.

Thank you everybody for your time and for joining in on this call.

Jon Ramer and Joey Crotty and the Compassion games, it’s great to be partners with you guys

Jon: Thanks everyone. Game on! Love wins!

Resources

The Rains Coming Down (lyrics)

It was the rain that brought the windIt was the rain coming downit was the wind that brought the sunand it's rays on everyoneit's the rays that brought the lightAnd when it was gone it was nightIt was the dark and the cold that brought me to my soulIt was the soul and the pain that brought me back again, back to the rainThe rains, coming down

The light brought the waveOf the sunAnd the sound

It was the earth melting downThat made me look aroundAnd learn to seeMore than only meIt was us in this townWho turned it back aroundBack to the rainThe rains, coming down

It was the hate in the soundThat told me look aroundAnd open up my heartCome together, not apartThat together we uniteBeyond the wrong and rightEverybody gainsBack to the rain

About Us

Charter for Compassion provides an umbrella for people to engage in collaborative partnerships worldwide. Our mission is to bring to life the principles articulated in the Charter for Compassion through concrete, practical action in a myriad of sectors.